How to use preg_match_all in this excerpt?

Question

<div>
  <span class="dark_text">Type:</span>
  <a href="https://myanimelist.net/topanime.php?type=var1">var2</a></div>~

I need to use preg_match_all to find the variable var2 regardless of what is written in var 1.

Example:

preg_match_all('!<a href="https://myanimelist.net/topanime.php?type=var1">(.*?)</a></div>',$result,$match);

Answer 1

That answer is based on the question before editing.

Just use:

/<a href="https:\/\/myanimelist.net\/topanime.php\?type=var1">(.*?)<\/a><\/div>/

It is necessary to escape the / and the ?, otherwise it will not work. So it will get the (.*?) that is between the string.

preg_match_all('/<a href="https:\/\/myanimelist.net\/topanime.php\?type=var1">(.*?)<\/a><\/div>/',$result,$match);


var_dump($match);

Upshot:

array(2) {
  [0]
  array(1) {
    [0]
    string(71) "<a href="https://myanimelist.net/topanime.php?type=var1">var2</a>"
  }
  [1]
  array(1) {
    [0]
    string(4) "var2"
  }
}

Also consider searching for Domdocument, so you can find other options.

Answer 2

The first detail is that in PHP as regex must have delimiters (a character indicating the beginning and end of the expression). In your case, you used !, so missed putting another ! in the end.

In addition, several characters have special meaning in regex, such as the dot and the ? (the question indicates that something is optional, then in your case the php? signfica "Ph" followed by an optional "p"). If you want them to be considered common characters with no special meaning, you should escape with \. Then it would be:

$texto = '<div>
<span class="dark_text">Type:</span>
<a href="https://myanimelist.net/topanime.php?type=var1">var2</a></div>';
if (preg_match_all('!<a href="https://myanimelist\.net/topanime\.php\?type=var1">(.*?)</a></div>!', $texto, $match)) {
    var_dump($match);
}

If you only want to get the content inside the tag a (that is to say, var2), just take $match[1].

---

Do not use regex

But in fact regex is not the ideal tool for manipulating HTML (learn more by reading this famous Soen response).

In this case, it would be better to use DOMDocument:

$texto = '<div>
<span class="dark_text">Type:</span>
<a href="https://myanimelist.net/topanime.php?type=var1">var2</a></div>';
$dom = new DOMDocument();
$dom->loadHtml($texto);
$xpath = new DOMXPath($dom);
foreach ($xpath->query('//a[@href="https://myanimelist.net/topanime.php?type=var1"]') as $link) { // procura elementos a com a URL desejada
    echo $link->textContent; // var2
}

As much as "works" in simpler cases, regex may fail as HTML becomes more complex (for example, if the link is commented, regex does not detect DOMDocument can detect and ignore commented snippets, etc). Regex is not always the best solution.

---

As indicated in the comments, if var1 is variable in URL, an alternative is to change to:

foreach ($xpath->query('//a[starts-with(@href, "https://myanimelist.net/topanime.php?type=")]') as $link) { // procura elementos a com a URL desejada
    parse_str(parse_url($link->getAttribute('href'), PHP_URL_QUERY), $output);
    if ($output['type'] == 'var1') { // se type é "var1" (ou qualquer outro valor que você quiser) 
        echo $link->textContent; // var2
    }
}